Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 323: Soulbound to Suffering

"Lapis."

"...wut?"

David couldn’t stop the dumbfounded sound that escaped his lips when he heard the name Jamie called.

While he had already figured out that someone was controlling his sister’s body, never in his wildest dreams did he expect that someone to be the one Jamie had just called.

"...why would a Race Empress...?"

He asked the question that everyone present wanted to know the answer to.

Under their inquisitive gazes, Lapis sighed, raising a hand to her forehead as she gazed up at the night sky, still littered with the hundreds of moons she had created.

Then, meeting Jamie’s eyes, she spoke.

"...please take out your sword, first."

She didn’t act like it, but Jamie’s sword was constantly dealing serious soul damage to her.

His final attack hadn’t been flashy, but the amount of energy he infused into the blade, added upon the blade’s original attack power easily made it the strongest attack he’d unleashed since his awakening last year.

Jamie didn’t respond to her request and only silently maintained his grip on the blade, prompting her to force out her voice once more.

"...there’s no point fighting anymore. At this point, I can only hope to convince you with words."

For a few seconds, Jamie remained still, drumming his fingers against the pommel of his sword.

Then, he tightened his grip and pulled out the sword in one go, causing blood to spurt from Davina’s body like a fountain.

David’s expression darkened at this, but before he could say or do anything, the blood froze mid-air, before flowing back into the young vampire’s body.

The one who’d made this happen, Lapis, sighed softly as she forced herself to sit up.

"My Blood Transference was interrupted, and so much blood was wasted already. Can’t lose any more."

Blood Transference—the ritual that was being performed on Davina’s body, to transfer Lapis’ power into it via her blood. Of course, this ritual didn’t just add the blood but replaced it.

Considering how short the ritual had been active, Lapis had moved a significant portion of her power already. But that was because her soul had already moved over and suppressed Davina’s soul completely.

This was expected, as Davina’s mortal soul was simply incapable of resisting the powerful Monarch Realm Soul of the Vampire Empress that was Lapis.

Lapis smeared the blood on her hands on the stab wound on her chest, and slowly, it melded back into her skin, with the wound closing up very quickly.

Since Davina’s body had only taken one hundred-billionth of a percent of the damage like Jamie stated earlier, it was relatively easy for the wound to heal.

After the wound healed, Lapis went silent. But upon feeling Jamie’s silent gaze that urged her to start talking already, she lifted up a finger.

"One moment."

The words had barely left her lips when her body suddenly convulsed. Without warning, she doubled over, retching up nearly a pint of thick, black, rotting blood right before their eyes.

David and Wanete couldn’t believe their eyes. The eerie magic radiating from the expelled blood made their heads swim with nausea just from proximity, and their confusion only deepened.

Where the hell did that come from?

As for the one who just vomited that blood, she wiped her lips like nothing was wrong and got to her feet.

"Now then, I only have a few minutes of grace to speak about this, so it’d be best if you didn’t interrupt me."

While speaking, she grabbed the bottom of her shirt, and before anyone could question it, she suddenly pulled it up.

"...why are you stripping?!"

David finally lost it. It was bad enough that Lapis had taken control of his sister’s body—now she was undressing in public?!

But before he could act on his anger, Lapis lifted Davina’s undershirt, exposing something that made him freeze in place.

There was some kind of marking around her stomach, a strange circular pattern lacerated across it, blood oozing from the cuts.

More importantly, it was emanating the same kind of eerie magic power as the blood Lapis had just vomited now.

With every passing second, the markings spread, inching further across her body.

Seeing this, Jamie narrowed his eyes.

"A Curse."

Lapis nodded.

"Indeed. A rather nasty one at that. Its effects are engraved into my very existence.

Besides..."

Meeting Jamie’s eyes, Lapis asked with a depreciating smile.

"Doesn’t that wound look familiar?"

"..."

Jamie frowned at her question, silent but puzzled. Why would the curse’s wound be familiar to him?

Seeing his confusion, Lapis silently moved her gaze upwards, and immediately, Jamie’s eyes widened in realisation.

He didn’t need to follow her gaze to know what she was looking at.

That exact wound. In that exact spot.

Jamie remembered it because he was the one who had healed it.

A wound she had suffered in battle against the Amorphous Space Beast 450 million years ago.

It was a memorable scene because Jamie had arrived just as she received that wound whilst trying to protect a wave of fleeing spaceships from the ASB and had ended up getting stabbed in the stomach with its tail.

This was before it had enlarged its size to the ginormous mass that now floated in the vacuum of space in Pinecone.

"I thought it was over after you healed me, but the real crisis began after we killed that thing."

Lapis let go of the undershirt as she spoke.

"The curse is straightforward—it’s a death sentence that ensures I follow that thing to the grave."

It was a simple, yet utterly terrifying curse.

"No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop it from eating away at me day by day, until it eventually became strong enough to kill me."

Jamie’s expression darkened at her words. For 450 million years, Lapis had been battling against this curse gnawing at her very existence.

Now, one would wonder why she didn’t ask Jamie or any of the other Hybrids for help.

But Lapis wasn’t stupid. If she could do that, would she have suffered for 450 million years without a word?

The fact that she hadn’t meant that she simply couldn’t.

"This nasty thing has an even nastier side effect. I can’t speak to anyone about it without intensifying its effects and hastening my own demise."

Glancing at her unconscious vampire subordinates scattered across the ground, she continued.

"Most of them only found out because they witnessed the curse nearly killing me first-hand."

That harrowing sight was what made these vampires who were fiercely loyal to her, dare to conceive the thought of fighting one of the Legendary Hybrids, all to buy Lapis enough time to complete the Blood Transference. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

This brought them to the matter of the Blood Transference, and why she needed Davina’s body.

"The first time, it took a million years before it gathered enough power to finally kill me. I exhausted every option, but not even the Authorities of Sub-Cosmic realm existences could dispel the curse.

But I couldn’t afford to die.

I had become an indispensable part of protecting Pinecone. If I were to die, what would become of the Galaxy he died protecting?"

So, to stave off the curse and buy herself more time, Lapis abandoned her original body and transferred her soul into another.

"The method was rather crude at first. I didn’t have anything as convenient as ’Blood Transference’ back then."

Lapis’ gaze grew distant, lost in memories of that time.